It wouldn’t be a friendship without a road trip

EDMONTON — There’s nothing more perfect than a road trip to seal a friendship. Especially when two friends are drawn together from opposite points of the country, as country singer/songwriters Dean Brody and Paul Brandt are. Brody lives in Nova Scotia; Brandt makes his home in Calgary. They met a few years ago backstage at a Canadian Country Music Awards show and found that they were simpatico. Their 2015 Road Trip Tour has Brody and Brandt as co-headliners, taking some of the pressure off both as they attempt to fill the hockey arenas booked for the jaunt.

Especially when two friends are drawn together from opposite points of the country, as country singer/songwriters Dean Brody and Paul Brandt are. Brody lives in Nova Scotia; Brandt makes his home in Calgary. They met a few years ago backstage at a Canadian Country Music Awards show and found that they were simpatico. Their 2015 Road Trip Tour has Brody and Brandt as co-headliners, taking some of the pressure off both as they attempt to fill the hockey arenas booked for the jaunt.

Brandt has seen ups and downs in his career, but he’s always had a faithful fan base. He made a big splash in the U.S. in the mid-’90s with a couple of top five hits (My Heart Has a History, I Do), but the streak didn’t last long, and by the time the 21st century rolled up he had left his major label home (Reprise Records) and set up his own company, Brand-T. Once freed of the claws of the Nashville beast, he scaled back and began, in his own words, to think more as an artist and less as a commodity.

He’s had sporadic successes since in Canada, but from late 2014 on Brandt began hitting the country Top 10 with a run of singles: Forever Summer, Get a Bed, Nothing and most recently I’m an Open Road, with Jess Moskaluke. Brandt has no plans to collect these digital singles into CD format at the moment, but he is talking about a run of vinyl.

Brody was also a constant presence on the charts this year, with Upside Down and Bring Down the House from his fifth release, Gypsy Road, breaking into the Top 10. Brody started out as a Nashville songwriter and somewhat hesitantly made the move to live performing. He’s done well since returning to the homeland, picking up fistfuls of CCMA and Juno nominations and awards, most recently winning CCMA Video of the Year for Upside Down.

Postmedia News spoke with both in advance of the intensive cross-Canada tour, which started Sept. 24 in Victoria and stops in Regina on Wednesday. It winds up at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax on Oct. 24.

Q: Paul, when you released Get A Bed in late 2014 you caused quite the uproar. First for gently poking fun at the stream of bro-country singles we’ve been deluged with in the last few years and second because you included a verse by rapper Fresh IE.

Brandt: It sure got people talking, didn’t it? I’ve never had a more polarizing song, and the reactions from people depended on where they came from. On Twitter everyone thought it was awesome, and on Facebook it was maybe 50-50. People who called into radio stations did not like it at all; they were like, “What’s this rap doing in the middle of the song?”

Q: It was kind of a musical litmus test.

Brandt: Absolutely; it was also a statement. I see genre mixing as great. I grew up with no secular music in the house; until I was 13 it was all a cappella and gospel. When I first went to a studio in Nashville and one of these world-class musicians said “We’re gonna do this Beatles-y change here,” I said “Who are these Beatles that you speak of?” Now the floodgates are open for me, and I love it all.

Q: Dean, you came from a very limited musical background, didn’t you?

Brody: Where I was growing up (in B.C.) we only had this AM radio station that would play everything from Aerosmith to Gordon Lightfoot, AC/DC to Anne Murray. It’s different there now, but at the time I thought nothing of it. I really think those influences creep in, and it’s something I can’t help.

Q: One of the ways in which you’ve been trying to go outside the box on Gypsy Road is by writing songs on unfamiliar instruments.

Brody: My daughter has been taking ukulele lessons from (Juno-nominated singer-songwriter) Kim Barlow. She has this little yellow uke with dolphins on it. Anyways, one day I asked her to teach me some chords. She said “OK,” pulled out her chord book and showed me three of them. I’m a hack on it, but it’s helped me to take different creative directions, which is nice; it helped me to write Upside Down. I need those avenues to keep fresh, so I’m not pumping out cookie-cutter template songs.

Q: Do you view Paul as something of a mentor in the music scene?

Brody: He’s someone I respect a great deal. I mean, look at what he’s done! It’s kind of nice, because I have people like Paul, Aaron (Lines) and Deric (Ruttan) to hang out and bond with. It’s a unique business, and it’s good to have people who can relate to what you’re doing.

Brandt: I think Dean has a clear idea of what he’s doing, so I wouldn’t use the term “mentor.” We have a lot in common, though. He also had his time in Nashville, but I always felt that he’s always had his own vision of what he wanted to do. I’ve certainly been a fan of his music for some time, and I’m looking forward to getting out there with him.

Brody: The main thing is that this is going to be a lot of fun.

Moskaluke will also be on the bill Wednesday at the Brandt Centre. Coming off her second straight CCMA female artist of the year award, the Langenburg product released her latest album, Kiss Me Quiet, on Sept. 25.

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